How Often Should You Vacuum?

Are you vacuuming your floors enough?

Are you cleaning your floors enough? How often should you vacuum? If you are unsure about how regularly you should vacuum, you’re not alone!

But did you know that frequent vacuuming can extend the lifetime of your carpets, tiles, or hard surfaces? When you don’t clean your floors regularly with a vacuum cleaner, dust and bacteria can build up. And this can lead to damage to your floor surface.

Bacteria and dirty floor surfaces can also lead to health risks, especially if you have pets or someone with allergies in your household.

So, no matter what type of flooring you have, it’s important to know how often to vacuum it.

In this article, we’ll show you how often you should vacuum. So you can protect your carpeted floors against everyday wear and tear and increase its lifespan. With the best cleaning routine and vacuum tips, you can keep your floor looking its best every day.

This is How Often You Should Be Vacuuming

How often you should vacuum your flooring depends on the traffic and the number of people or pets living in the area.

For carpeted areas, the CRI recommends ⁽¹⁾:

• For high-traffic areas, you should vacuum daily. This concerns especially the entryways, the living room, and kitchen spaces. And if you have a lot of people or pets in your household, this can lead to a lot of traffic and mess in those areas involving more frequent vacuuming.
• For medium-traffic areas, you should vacuum at least two times a week.
• And, in light-traffic areas such as guest rooms or formal dining rooms, you should clean once per week.

This vacuuming frequency guide applies to other hard floors surfaces as well — such as laminate, tiles, and hardwood floors. You should vacuum hard surface floors at least weekly if lightly soiled. But, if you notice more debris or dust occasionally, you should clean them twice a week.

And, if you have hard floors in high-traffic areas, or if you have pets, you should clean daily. Having pets in busy floor-areas requires more frequent vacuuming. This is to ensure that you eliminate any dander, bacteria, and dirt that can build up on your flooring or rugs.

Vacuuming Tips

Keep these tips in mind when you vacuum your floor.

Dust First

First, make sure you always dust your home or room first.

This will save you from having to vacuum again after dusting your window treatments, furniture, or other surfaces. This way, you’ll vacuum all of the fallen dust in one cleaning session.

Vacuum Slowly

When vacuuming carpets, make sure you vacuum slowly. This will provide more airflow through the brush bar to agitate and loosen dust and particles in your carpet fibers. So you’ll trap more dust in each pass.

Slow vacuuming allows you to remove tiny particles and other allergens hidden deep in your carpet pile. Plus, you won’t miss any hidden dust beneath your carpet’s fibers.

Clean Hard to Reach Areas and Corners

Always remember to clean the areas you don’t see too. Hard-to-reach areas such as under furniture, rugs, corners, and edges, can collect a lot of dirt as well as human skin cells and dust mite excrement.

So, don’t forget to clean these areas in your regular vacuuming too.

Use HEPA Vacuums

Vacuum cleaners with HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filters can trap 99.97% of all dirt, dust, and allergens in the air. This can reduce health effects from airborne particles circulating in the air ⁽²⁾. For example, dust, spray mists, pollen, molds, and pet dander.

Whereas vacuum cleaners that have non-HEPA filters trap around only 96% of the dirt. And this is a big difference, especially if you have anyone with asthma or allergies in your house.

Adjust Your Vacuum Cleaner

If you have different floor surfaces in your house, you will need to adjust the height of your upright vacuum head. The height should always match the type of flooring you’re vacuuming. This will ensure efficient suctioning throughout your clean.

Some upright vacuums have the option to turn the beater bar off. This is great if you have hard surface floors or high-pile carpet.

For example, a beater bar is great for removing dust and dirt from low to medium pile carpets. But, they can be harsh on other types of flooring. These brushes can scratch hard surface floors or damage high-pile carpet fibers. So an option to turn this off is a must-have adjustment feature if you have hard floors.

Pay Attention to the Attachments

Next, consider the attachments on your vacuum. Different tools can provide a lot of versatility for your vacuuming. For instance, they allow you to vacuum other items in your home, such as shelves or furniture.

Each vacuum comes with different attachments. This can include universal or all-purpose brushes that are suitable for vacuuming books and shelves. Or a crevice tool designed to reach narrow areas and corners easily to remove food particles and other dirt.

Some vacuums have dusting brushes for cleaning soft surface types or rug fibers. Or an upholstery nozzle to vacuum furniture, drapes, mattresses, and other fabrics. So it’s important to use the right attachments to suit your needs.

Maintain Your Vacuum Cleaner

Make sure you maintain your vacuum cleaner regularly to keep it running efficiently.

Always check the hose on canister vacuums for blockages or buildup. And clean your brush, hose, and filters at least once a month.

Lastly, you should also empty your dust cup after each clean and wash it at least once a week. Or, if you have a bagged vacuum, replace it when it is around ⅔ full to avoid losing suction power as you clean.

Opt For a Mop

Finally, consider using a mop if you’re not able to vacuum. For example, if your vacuum is broken or under maintenance, you can opt for a mop instead.

Plus, if you have large debris on your flooring, mopping or sweeping may be more efficient for cleaning. This is because some vacuum heads are not designed to suction up large particles or dirt. So in this case, you should sweep or mop your flooring instead.